2. 2013
Volume 125 Issue 97
kansan.com
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
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Geology 726 students fill a weather balloon with hydrogen. The balloon needed enough hydrogen to lift the seven-pound sensor.
JENNA JAKOWATZ/KANSAN
FLYIN' HIGH
UP IN THE AIR
Geography students launch mapping balloon
JENNA JAKOWAT7
ijakowatz@kansan.com
Any day now, a group of students will send a balloon 100,000 feet into the air.
The students enrolled in Geography 726, a graduate-level class revolving around remote sensing, have spent the semester designing and building a balloon they named the PHOG-NS.
The PHOG-NS will ascend into the air, pop at 100,000 feet, and then deploy a parachute carrying sensors, a camera, transmitters and a GPS back to the ground.
"We've had no instructions on this project. It's all student-driven," said Bryan Long, a graduate student who is working on the project.
The parachute will carry a 7-pound Styrofoam-insulated cylinder that will transmit data from the air back to the team stationed in Lawrence.
"Our system is equipped to take photographs, collect barometric pressure, temperature, GPS locations which include latitude, longitude, and altitude, and we have a color infrared camera." Long said.
On March 28, the team launched the balloon and parachute in a tethered test. The run-through was designed to give the team an idea of how the real launch will go. The team collected small amounts of data that they can examine before the official launch.
"We should have, theoretically, at 100,000 feet a ground-spatial resolution of about 10 or 11 meters," Steven Foga, a first-year graduate student in the geography department, said. "The camera will be capturing images at three-second intervals. We have an accelerometer, which will help us adjust for whenever the sensor is sideways. The idea is to be looking straight down so you can make ground
measurements and estimations of whatever you want to study"
Long says software will assist the group in rectifying images so that photographs taken from the air will come out flat, like in Google Earth.
The team will be able to track the parachute as it makes its way back to Earth by using its internal GPS.
Once wind pattern projections are favorable, the group will launch the balloon from Clinton Lake. It is expected to return back to the ground in the Kansas City area. By using a radio downlink, the group will be able to look at data as it is collected. The infrared monitors will capture images of vegetation health. Ideally, the images collected could help farmers improve their crop yield by seeing where in their fields their crop is struggling.
Edited by Madison Schultz
Student athletes have a higher graduation rate of 85 percent. Student athletes work with tutors every day to maintain grades while they are in season.
GEORGE MULLINIX/KANSAN
UNIVERSITY
Kansas athletes' GPA ranked among top colleges
EMILY DONOVAN
edonovan@kansan.com
As primetime television networks prepare to broadcast the NCAA Final Four, teams practice drills, blocks and passes. However, the Jayhawks' successes extend well past the defeat at Cowboy Stadium last weekend. While fans' lucky T-shirts and thunderous chanting cheer on athletics, student athletes balance their time between sports and tests, assignments and readings.
Inside Higher Ed, an online news publication, squares off university education programs. After the NCAA releases the second brackets, teams face off not on the court but in the classroom. The annual academic bracket [http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/IHE2013men%27sbracket(1).]
JPG] compares teams' Academic Progress Rates, a scale the NCAA uses to monitor eligibility. This year, the Kansas men's basketball team placed second, with a perfect APR of 1.000.
"That shows you how much emphasis we put on the academic side of the student-athlete ratio," said Jim Marchiony, Associate Athletics Director of Communications/Media Relations.
In 2012, student athletes have a four-year graduation rate of 85 percent, which is higher than the University-wide average of 37 percent. Marchiony believes that this is partially due to University support and largely due to athletes' natural competitiveness and the University's policy of recruiting student athletes who are motivated to succeed behind a desk as well as in a work out.
"We all push each other," said
Midyett, a senior from Olathe studying science science, was recruited for the women's rowing team out of high school. The NCAA Division I varsity rowing team is scholarship-only, meaning that each of the 60 rowers receives an athletic scholarship ranked by seniority that includes athletic gear, books, tuition or housing. Midyett gets as much work done as possible between classes, as every day is sandwiched by a 6-8 a.m. and a 5-7 p.m. practice.
Ashlyn Midyett. "It's a competitive nature to see who can do the best during practice, during competitions and also in the classroom."
"It takes some getting used to," Midyet said. "As a freshman I was overwhelmed because I didn't know what to expect for the load of college courses and I had no idea how to balance it. Now, as a senior, it's easy because time management
The NCAA requires athletes to enroll in at least 12 credit hours and maintain a minimum grade point average of 2.0. On top of the 20 hours a week in the weight room or on the water at the boathouse, Midyett spends eight hours a week in optional night tutoring for her biochemistry and physics classes.
"In general, expectations are very clear that every student is supposed to keep up with coursework regardless of what's going on outside of the classroom," said Associate Athletics Director Paul Buskirk.
has become second nature to me."
The Athletics Department focuses on getting the students in close contact with instructors and helping them balance athletics with academics. Letters are sent through student athletes to instructors that include potential conflicts at the
"I've always had really flexible professors who support athletes," said Leawood senior Devin Wiegers. "They respond in a timely manner and help you organize when to take your test, if you can turn stuff in early or if you can turn it in afterwards."
Wiegers is earning her masters in business who runs 55 to 60 miles a week in training for the cross country and track and field teams.
When competing at away tour naments, an academic counsellor and even occasionally tutors travel with each team to put together study hours between meetings, practices and games. Per instructor convenience, student athletes take conflicting exams before or after away games or have an academic member of the athletics staff or of the destination university's staff serve as a proctor so the athlete can
"They can't postpone work when they're on the road." Buskirk said. "They're writing papers, they're preparing for exams. They can't put the coursework aside or these few weeks in March will be absolutely brutal when they get back."
The University, Buskirk said, pushes students to prioritize both academics and athletics, even if only one is televised.
Index
"The most important thing to succeed in coursework has no magic to it," Buskirk said. "You've got to be in class, you have to be in close communication with your instructors and you have to work really hard. And those are the expectations that we have for our students."
take the exam at the same time as other students in the class.
CLASSIFIEDS 7 CRYPTOOUIPS 5 SPORTS 8
CROSSWORD 5 OPION 4 SUOOKU 5
beginning of the semester.
All contents, unless stated otherwise, © 2013 The University Daily Kansan
- Edited by Tyler Conover
Don't forget
Today's Weather
If you haven't paid your rent, you're two days late.
Partly cloudy with a 10 percent chance of precipitation
Fifty-four, what a score.